


Eating Us Alive

by Originalpuck



Category: The Eagle | Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Eagle Reverse Big Bang, M/M, Minor Character Deaths, Murder, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 04:38:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Originalpuck/pseuds/Originalpuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU. Working close to Esca can be painful for Marcus, particularly when it involves demon dolls and dead teens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eating Us Alive

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Untitled](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/13086) by Madnessisreal. 



> Written for [The Eagle Reverse Big Bang](http://eagle_rbb.livejournal.com), as a compliment to [madnessisreal](http://madnessisreal.livejournal.com/profile)'s [picture](http://madnessisreal.livejournal.com/45127.html) & the prompt: Modern AU. Marcus is a world-weary by-the-book Priest/Exorcist and Esca is a Hunter of all things Supernatural. They've been partners for a while, but not without their disagreements.
> 
> Thanks to [ladytiferet](http://ladytiferet.livejournal.com/profile), [clari_clyde](http://clari-clyde.livejournal.com/profile), and A for the beta work! I couldn't have done it without y'all! Though, as always, any remaining mistakes are my own.

“Danny’s dead and you want to know about my stupid health class project?” Rachel’s brown eyes were puffy and red, and her voice was rough. She looked like a complete mess when she’d answered the door, still in her pajamas and with her brown hair knotted and unbrushed. She’d tried to slam the door on them, but Esca had murmured a few words of enchantment to convince her to let them inside.

Marcus leaned forward, and placed a hand on her shoulder. He kept his voice gentle while still staying stern. “It’s important.”

“More important than whoever killed my boyfriend? It’s just a stupid doll! I didn’t even bother to take the thing home!” She started crying again. “We’d wanted to be partners on the project, but our idiot teacher assigned us to different ‘families,’ and now he’s gone. He was eaten to death, did you know? By some fucking cannibal! And all you care about is that doll? Well, I’m glad the damned thing’s in my locker; I never want to see it again.”

At those words she seemed to deflate, and tumbled into Marcus’s arms. “You’re a priest,” she mumbled, between sobs. “Is he in a better place?”

Marcus cast a look at Esca over his shoulder. Esca was glancing around the living room, before disappearing into what looked like the kitchen. “Yes,” Marcus said, even though he had no idea, not really. “A much better place.”

Esca returned with a shake of his head, and an apple in his hand. He’d already taken a bite, and his jacket pockets bulged as though he’d grabbed more food for the road. He gestured for Marcus to hurry things along, and Marcus tried his best to glare at his partner while still reassuring the girl. Rachel was in mourning, and it was his job to make her feel better.

Except that tonight it wasn’t. Tonight it was his job to hunt down those dolls, the ones that were responsible for killing and making dinner out of the students who had been assigned to watch over them. Sighing, he slowly extricated himself from Rachel, and, apologizing, headed for the door.

As he stepped out of it, Esca waved, before whispering the words that would make Rachel forget that they’d ever stepped into her home. “I don’t know why you bothered,” Esca said, his voice calm, as they walked back to their car. “She won’t remember anything you said, anyways.”

“I took an oath,” Marcus said.

“So?” Esca shrugged, and hopped into the passenger’s seat. “It’s still pointless.”

With a glare at Esca, Marcus shook his head. It hurt, that Esca wasn’t even trying to understand. Or maybe he was, but he just couldn’t figure it out. Marcus wasn’t sure which idea was more painful. “Just nevermind. You clearly don’t get it.”

He didn’t miss the frustrated look that Esca gave him, even as he finished his apple and tossed the core out the window.

* * *

“I feel like I’m back in high school,” Esca said. He feigned a shudder mostly for Marcus’s benefit, giving him a small smile over his shoulder. “Of course, even _I_ didn’t get a detention that lasted this long.”

It was well past midnight when they’d snuck into the school. The last two students that they’d spoken to after Rachel had admitted to leaving their dolls at school for the weekend. They didn’t know it, but the fact that they were slackers was probably the only reason that they were still alive, while the classmates they mourned had died in a horrible, gory manner. Most of them had even been eaten alive, before the shock or blood-loss finally killed them.

Marcus shuddered, and hoped God would take pity on their souls. Esca noticed Marcus’s shiver out of the corner of his eye and offered Marcus a granola bar he’d snatched earlier. “You’ve gotta be hungry by now.”

Marcus shook his head, and nodded back towards the lockers in front of them. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Really, there was nothing like a half-eaten body and a renegade group of demon dolls to ruin Marcus’s appetite. Not that it had done anything to Esca’s. He'd snuck some food from every house they’d been to. When Marcus had snapped at him about it, he’d countered that magic took energy and that food helped him feel better. Which had to be true because he was doing just fine jimmying open doors, despite casting spells on everyone they’d spoken to _and_ fighting off some demon dolls late last night, before they’d figured out the pattern to the deaths.

“Just open the locker door Esca,” Marcus said. Esca may have had some strange reserves of energy but Marcus didn’t. They’d been working this case all day and he was exhausted, frustrated, and his leg hurt from standing on it so long. He knew his leg would hurt like hell after this was all done, and he contemplated taking a day off after this so that he wouldn’t have to revert to using his cane in front of Esca. He didn’t want Esca, or anyone else, for that matter, to see Marcus with his cane and worry more about Marcus's health than the mission at hand.

Esca shrugged his graceful shoulders. “I still don’t see why we can’t just use the locker combinations that they gave us.”

“We don’t want to give whatever’s in there the chance to know that we’re coming.”

Esca’s eyebrows quirked. “And this discussion, right outside of the locker, doesn’t?”

Marcus frowned and fingered the blessed dagger that Esca had loaned him for the night. “Just open the door.”

His gun pointed forward, Esca murmured a spell, and the door sprung open without Esca ever having touched it. Marcus tensed as he heard the metal creak, and then frowned even harder. “Empty.”

Esca swung his gun around, aiming down the hall, and glancing above them, as well. “Well, there goes our nice, easy fish-in-a-barrel hunt,” Esca said. Yet there was a small smile on his face, and Marcus could tell that Esca was almost pleased to have a decent fight, after a day of dealing with mourning kids and weeping families.

“Looks like we’re going to have to tear this place apart,” Marcus said. “If they’re even still here.” He wasn’t as excited, or so he told himself, even though he knew it was a lie. His pulse was racing, his hearing sharpening and his eyes flitting about the hallway they were stuck in.

His brain was throwing out all sorts of possible outcomes, from finding the dolls already dead, to finding them eating a teacher or night janitor. He was thinking of potential hiding places, and ways to hack apart a small plastic doll. He felt fresh and alive, in a way that he only felt before a battle. But no, he convinced himself. No, he wasn’t supposed to find this sort of thing fun. Taking down murderous things in service of the Lord is _not_ supposed to be fun.

Marcus also wasn’t supposed to find Esca’s serious hunter face sexy. He wasn't supposed to trace Esca's sharp cheekbones with his eyes and wonder how they'd taste under his tongue, wasn't supposed to want to lick the furrow between Esca's eyebrows, or bite Esca's savagely smiling lips. He wasn't supposed to want to imagine that Esca's limbs were tensed for him, because they'd been straining and fucking all night and Esca was so close to release that he couldn't stand it anymore.

He wasn't supposed to want to wrap his arms around Esca's small but lean body, or feel Esca's calloused hands on his own flesh. Those thoughts, and many others relating to Esca’s lean, proud body, were harder to dismiss. But Marcus tried, refocusing on the demon dolls that, like he had said, could be anywhere.

“So we go hall by hall,” Esca said. Marcus nodded, and then gestured towards the area where their hall dead-ended in a badly drawn mural of an Eagle, the school’s mascot, and then split off into two opposite directions. Marcus gestured with his head towards the left side of the hall, and Esca nodded, taking up the right.

They still had to check the other lockers, since the rest of the dolls might still be in the remaining two. But it didn’t hurt to be extra careful as they explored each hallway.

As Marcus, the only one with a free hand, signaled Esca by ticking down his fingers, they swung onto each side of the new hallway, Esca with his gun at the ready, and Marcus with the dagger in one hand and, at the last second, grabbing a vial of holy water in the other.

“Clear,” Esca said, after a moment of staring. “At least, I think it is. This is worse than the mausoleum the other day. There’s twice as many hiding spots here.”

They hadn't wanted to risk alerting anyone to their presence in the school, so they hadn't turned on any lights when they'd entered; the hallway was dark, dotted only on Esca's side with small windows that let in some moonlight. He turned his head towards his own side of the hallway, and felt his eyes continually try to refocus in the darkness.

Shadows flickered along the dark floor on Marcus's side, wavering and shifting closer and then further away. Marcus's heart thundered inside his chest, and he gripped his dagger tighter. He'd been about to alert Esca when he realized that the way they moved didn't resemble the dolls from earlier; that the shadows had to be something else. He quickly tilted his head and darted his eyes to the windows.

Empty tree branches were swaying with the harsh wind outside, and reflecting inside the building. He exhaled and returned his eyes to his side of the hall. The pale outdoors light didn't manage to properly illuminate the many rows of floor-to-ceiling green lockers, any of which could be hiding a doll waiting to lunge out and tear apart their throats.

In between were classrooms that had long-since been emptied of students, but which held desks, cupboards, and all sorts of other hiding places for small, flesh-eating creatures. They could be anywhere, and Marcus strained his eyes and his ears, trying to hear above the wind and see through the unresolved shadows in the dark.

“Quiet.” Marcus squinted at what he could have sworn was a classroom door swinging shut. There weren’t any windows down this particular side of the hall, though, and neither of them were wielding a flashlight, so he couldn’t be sure. Still, he didn’t want to take any chances.

“I think something just went into a classroom down here,” he whispered. Esca heard. He always heard Marcus, even when he'd wandered into the middle of a vampire nest's feeding frenzy, five feet underground, and was about to be next on their menu.

Marcus backed up, until his back was to the mural, and Esca did the same, moving his attention towards Marcus’s side of the hall. “Which room?”

He was squinting in the dark, but Marcus knew that Esca had better vision at night than during the day. Maybe it was because he was Witch-born, or maybe he was just used to fighting in the darkness in a way that Marcus still never quite was. Marcus wasn’t sure either way but at the moment, like in almost every other hunt, Marcus wasn’t about to be displeased with it. “Second from the end, on the left.”

Esca leaned around him, eyes squinting. “The angle’s bad,” he mumbled. “I have to get closer.”

And then, as if he expected Marcus to keep his back just as much as Marcus expected the same from Esca, he slowly started moving down the hallway, sticking to the center, where something was less likely to pop out of the lockers and lunge onto him. As he moved Marcus could barely hear Esca's boots on the floor, and he crept forward with his gun constantly moving and changing targets- first a locker, then a classroom on his left, then another locker with its door hanging ever-so-slightly open.

Marcus crept behind him, trying to move as lightly as he could with his leg aching so badly that it was hard to move. He kept his breathing light, his eyes skimming over the grates in the floor that were thankfully well-bolted down, and then to the gaps in the ceiling where something could drop down on them. They were about halfway to the classroom when he heard a door slam, loudly, behind them, and then the sound of plastic scuttling quickly on the linoleum floor.

Marcus whirled, catching movement in the faint light from the few windows that dotted the right hallway. It was more than one doll and they were keeping to the shadows. They weren't moving directly towards them, or, at least, Marcus didn't think so. He kept losing sight of them in the shadows, no matter how hard he tried to follow. It didn't help that when one skittered behind a locker, he would just catch a glimpse of a second in the light and have to switch his focus. “Over here, all three of them.”

Esca cursed. “Someone’s definitely in that room, too.”

Marcus growled. “I’ll take the person,” he said. After all, exorcisms were his job, and hunting was Esca’s, even if they did sometimes enjoy switching roles.

Deftly moving around each other, Esca pushed Marcus toward the door, and then stepped closer to the dolls which had stopped moving or sounded like they had.

Not that Marcus could focus on the sounds behind him anymore. He was after the girl in the classroom and he couldn’t afford to be distracted. Trying his best to ignore the noises behind him, he placed the dagger back into its sheath on his side and pulled out a cross from his bag to place in his other hand. Holy water and a cross, the quickest ways to piss off a demon, but also the best ways to start to exorcise one.

Taking a deep breath, he limped the remaining few feet down the hall, hearing Esca’s curses as the plastic started moving and letting them wash away with his tension. Just as he felt calm and ready to pray again, he stopped dead. The door that he’d been staring at had opened on its own, the light suddenly bright and filtering out into the hall. And then, as if she couldn’t care less about Marcus and Esca, a teenager, no older than Rachel, stepped out of the room.

Except this girl’s eyes were wide and pale, reflecting the light from behind her and lacking any sort of iris. Her clothing was tattered and she was holding a baby swaddled to her chest. Or, at least, Marcus _assumed_ it was a real baby. There weren’t any more dolls other than the three that Esca was handling. They’d made sure of it.

“Hurting innocent kids, Father? Shame on you,” the girl hissed. Her voice was raspy, and sounded much older than the girl looked. “Leave them alone and I won’t hurt you—much.”

She was threatening him, and Marcus didn't expect any less. If she was the only human around, then she had to be the one controlling them. He took in her tense yet hunched posture, and tried to ignore the sounds of someone hitting a locker. God, he hoped it wasn't Esca, because he couldn't stop what he was doing, had to keep his eyes on the girl in front of him. She was swaying now, almost rocking the child she held, like a mother rocking her newborn. He couldn't attack her, not with the hostage, but he couldn't help Esca, either. He was useless until he convinced the girl to move the baby out of harm's way.

“Set the child down and then we’ll go,” Marcus said, his eyes darting from the snarling expression on the girl’s face down to the baby in her arms, and back.

“Not a chance. You’ve hurt my daughter's friends; why should I let you have her?” She brought the baby closer to her chest, and Marcus heard the child cry. It wasn’t the fake electronic cry of the dolls, and his stomach dropped. She’d taken a real baby. Marcus didn’t even want to guess where she’d gotten it.

“They’re killing people,” he said, slowly inching forward as quickly as his aching leg would allow. “And so are you.”

“ _You're_ killing people!” She bared her teeth at Marcus. “My daughter's sick; she stopped moving one night, but this is helping her! The more energy that they take, the better that she gets.” The possessed girl allowed a fond glance down at the baby in her arms, and Marcus took that opportunity to spring forward.

Marcus's first concern was the child, and he tried to grab her even as his other hand was throwing holy water out of the vial and onto the teenager. It made a disturbing hissing sounds as it hit the girl's skin. But even with the pain as a distraction, Marcus couldn't wrench the baby free from her arms. She clawed his hands until he let go of the bundle, his flesh burning and throbbing where her clawed fingers had sliced into him. She snarled and shot her eyes up at Marcus as she lunged onto him, still clinging the baby to her chest with one hand, and lashed for Marcus’s neck.

Despite being smaller, she had the power of Satan on her side and was strong enough to slam Marcus back into a locker. His head spun as he struggled to keep his cross in one hand and his other arm worked to keep her snapping jaws back. Her fingers managed to draw more blood from his arm before the cross was shoved onto her skin, and she snarled and tried to back away. But Marcus had managed to grab a hold of her, and held on tight, prayers to their Father to release her soul spilling from his lips.

She jerked and hissed, bringing them both spinning and onto the floor, where Marcus’s head cracked so hard he let go of the girl and gasped for air. It was a small pause, a slight one, but it was enough for her to stop writhing in pain and instead to gain an advantage. She bit his arm, the one holding the cross, and Marcus dropped it as sharp agony pounded from both his head and his limbs. He tried to resume prayers while still attempting to wrestle her off of himself when he heard a gun shot.

She fell on top of him, blood spraying Marcus’s face.

For several seconds, nothing made sense. There shouldn't be blood on his face, she hadn't scraped that, had she? He was tasting copper but he hadn't bit his lips, and neither did she. In fact, she wasn't moving much at all, just a few spasms from her body that didn't seem to be hurting Marcus at all.

Then, unable to handle the blood dripping onto him, Marcus slid out from under her. Seeing the hole in her head from where she’d been shot, he glanced back to see Esca, bloody and scraped up, standing only a few feet behind him.

How had Esca, was it Esca? Had the girl killed herself? No, it couldn't be. He remembered Esca's gun, and struggled with his words, finally getting out something that he hoped sounded like, “you killed her!”

“You would be dead if I hadn’t. She had the advantage!” His voice was sharp, angry. As if Esca had a _right_ to be angry. “I took care of her dolls and then saw you on the ground. I had a shot, so I took it.”

“She was possessed. She didn’t know what she was doing and you _killed her._ ” Still, even as his anger surged through him, he had to admit that sitting upright was a struggle, and that even when he tried the lockers loomed and tumbled around him, the ceiling trying its hardest to become the floor. The fallen girl next to him was moving closer and further from him without seeming to actually move at all, and her blood was pooling and making everything extra slick.

He had a feeling he had a concussion, and he was dripping blood as he tried to flip the teenager to get at the baby she was holding. His arms and fingers throbbed, and he was barely able to clench around her clothes hard enough to hold on. He used his whole body, and practically fell on top of her as he finally got her body to flip onto her side. He was almost positive he was panting from the effort.

Between gasps for air, he continued to scold Esca. “She had a hostage, an innocent. You could’ve killed her, too.”

Even in death, the girl seemed to be clutching tight to her child. Marcus waited a second for the body to stop moving, for his own body to stop shaking against his will, before getting back to work. He had to yank the baby off from her chest where the blankets seemed to be tied, and it hurt him like hell to tug at them. Yeah, they had to be tied, and how come he hadn't noticed that before? The baby’s face was being smothered by them in a way that they hadn’t been before he’d hit the ground, and he fumbled to get his fingers to co-operate long enough to uncover her. “It’s already dead,” Esca said, kneeling besides Marcus in his vain attempt to unravel the blankets. “Has been this entire time.”

“No, I heard her cry,” he argued. Yet when he managed to unwrap the baby, he saw that Esca was right. The pale light from the classroom showed that the child was pale, bloated, and had even started to decompose, if only slightly. Marcus shuddered. “I heard it,” he repeated.

“She’d been enchanting it,” Esca said. “Trying to bring it back to life. She’d been using the other dolls as energy leeches, and then transferring the life they stole. Or, at least, trying to. It’s old, dark magic, and difficult to work.”

“A pact with the demon, to bring her child back,” Marcus said. It was the only thing that made sense—she was clearly possessed, not Witch-born, like Esca. She’d reacted to his prayers and cross poorly enough for him to know that she wasn’t just a regular Other-born. “Still, she deserves some blessings, a chance at Last Rites. Her daughter, too.” He took a breathe, and, despite the way the darkness played tricks on his eyes and the room tilted, he tried to find his cross.

Esca scowled. “Look, someone might’ve heard the gun shot. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Marcus ignored him, spotting his cross. He tried to get up, to lever himself into a standing position, but his head spun so badly that he ended up falling back down, onto his poor leg, and let out an undignified cry. Growling, Esca leaned down, over him. Esca's pale eyes were glaring, and he had larger frown lines then when he'd first been taken to work at the Vatican. “How bad is it?”

“I’ll be fine,” Marcus lied. He tried to use Esca’s arm to lever himself back up, but missed his first two attempts at latching onto him. It was almost like Esca was pulling away. Like the entire room was pulling away, like the tides in an ocean of blood. “Just let me finish this, then we can go.”

Still, Esca didn’t help. He just pressed him back down, his hands firm. His entire body seemed tensed, his eyes sharp, his voice tense and harsh. “Marcus,” he said. “How much of this is your blood?” His voice broke, just a little.

Marcus ignored him and tried to stand again, this time on his own. He was even getting the hang of the dizziness, learning to move with the room, instead of against it. He almost made it to his knees before falling again, when the room took a sharp veer to the left, unexpectedly. His head hit the floor and he had to bite back a shout of pain.

Despite his struggling, the world was fading to black.

* * *

When he awoke, he was laying on a stiff and tiny bed with a dusty-smelling red blanket thrown over him. The pale room seemed familiar, and he slowly remembered renting it before they'd started the case. He tried to check the wall-clock, but then remembered that it didn't work, and hadn't since they'd first rented the place.

Asides from feeling exhausted, his head had stopped throbbing and he felt fine. Even his leg, he realized, as he stretched it, felt as good as it ever did. Slowly sitting up, he saw that Esca had changed Marcus's clothes, and tried to fight down both the feeling of embarrassment and the desire that thrummed through him at that the thought of Esca seeing him naked.

As for Esca himself, he had also changed clothes. He’d slipped off his jacket and t-shirt, and was lounging in just a pair of jeans on the bed opposite him. His pale skin was perfect, and Marcus wanted to slip out of his bed and onto Esca's, drinking in every inch, every scar on his chest. But then his eyes fell onto the cross that had been burned into his skin, just above his heart. The cross that had been burnt into all of the Other-borns who worked for Rome. Marcus bit his lip and tried to ignore the sickness he felt at the sight of the scar that the Church had given to Esca. As if noticing Marcus for the first time, Esca dropped the book he was reading and he quickly moved to Marcus’s side.

“You used your magic on me.” It came out faint, gravely, instead of the strong accusation that he wanted it to be.

“You were hurt. It was serious, Marcus. You were pouring blood, and you wouldn’t have left on your own.”

“For a good reason. She died because of us, and I had to set it right.” His stomach rolled at the thought, at the memory of the possessed girl’s head, split open, and at the image of the dead child.

“She died because she killed people.” Esca took his eyes off of Marcus for a moment, and looked down, away. “I wouldn’t let her take you with her.” His voice was terse, but still, Marcus imagined that he seemed worried. “Some other priest can handle her final goodbyes.”

“You called it in?” Marcus asked. Usually he left that to Marcus, since Esca couldn’t stand Placidus, their handler. Placidus didn't think Esca, or any Other-born, should be in the field, and Esca didn't think that Placidus knew his head from a hole in the ground, especially when it came to fighting. Still, Esca had made the call, and Marcus couldn't help but be touched.

“You were healing.” Esca shrugged. “Are you feeling better?” Marcus tried to keep hold of his anger, to not continue staring deep into Esca’s eyes, or to shiver when Esca ran his fingers along the back of Marcus’s head, ruffling his hair.

“Much better,” he said. It was shaky and Esca pulled his hand back giving him a strange, appraising gaze. It wasn’t the first time that Esca had healed Marcus with his magic. It wasn’t even the first time he’d done so without Marcus’s consent. But this time Esca only sounded concerned for Marcus's well-being, instead of worrying about what the Church would do to Esca if Marcus got killed. Esca's gaze burned into Marcus, a heat behind them that spoke of concern and not defiance, that warmed Marcus to his core.

It took everything in him not to let out a breathy moan as Esca’s fingers went back to stroking the back of Marcus's head, before sliding down to run over his neck, his arms, his hands. He felt his cock jerk, and prayed Esca wouldn't notice. “I'm really fine, don't worry.”

If he sounded breathy, his desire for Esca hard to hide, well, Esca didn’t seem to pay it much attention until he had touched every place that the Possessed girl had hurt and saw for himself that Marcus was healing fine. “Good,” he whispered. “Don’t scare me like that again.”

“I won’t,” Marcus promised, Esca’s lips far too close to his own. Esca’s tongue slipped out and wet them, and Marcus struggled to keep himself from closing the distance between them and capturing Esca in the kiss he’d dreamed of for all four years of their partnership. He ached, knowing that no matter how close they were, there was a part of himself that he couldn't share. His stomach dropped with the knowledge that no matter how desperately he wanted, the one thing in the world that he needed was the one thing he could never have. He pulled back, and let himself blink away his desire. Esca seemed to snap out of it, too, and was stepping back towards his bed.

“Good,” Esca said. “Because we have another case as soon as we can get there. Something called a Slender Man.”

Marcus groaned, and suddenly wished that he’d pretended to be a lot more injured than he was. Was it too much to ask for a night off, to perhaps help some local priests, to do what he’d done before he’d discovered all of the nuances of creatures, demons, and Other-borns flooding the nights? But of course Placidus would never give them that sort of respite. Efficiency, that was Placidus's life motto. He was always telling them that they shouldn't put off for tomorrow what could be done today- especially not when lives were at stake.

Sighing, Marcus dragged himself off the bed, and headed to the bathroom. “I’m going to get clean, and then you can give me the details,” he said, before sliding into the bathroom and drawing a cold, desperate shower—one that he hoped would disguise his desire for Esca, or the ways that, Lord help him, he always touched himself in order to calm his needs.


End file.
